


In Love With Your Ghost

by Wings_and_Feet



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Happy(ish) but also really sad ending., Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28704402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wings_and_Feet/pseuds/Wings_and_Feet
Summary: He's tried. But how do you move forward when all you want is to go back?Eiji just wants to feel Ash wrap his arms around him again. He doesn't care what it costs anymore.His mind is a price he will pay for his soul.
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji, Max Lobo & Okumura Eiji, Okumura Eiji & Sing Soo-Ling
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	In Love With Your Ghost

In Love With Your Ghost

I

It was still dark. But it was the expectant type of dark that said that dawn would come soon. A few overzealous birds were already making a racket.

Dawn.

He squeezed his eyes shut. They burned with a cold fire. He was exhausted. But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Not tonight.

He blinked his eyes back open, glancing at the numbers in the corner of the computer screen. 4:27 am. He knew what awaited him on the screen. All he would have to do was move the cursor, wake the screen, and he would have several thousand words to lull his mind with an analysis of representations of solitude within classic literature. It would be interesting. It would be well reasoned.

It would speak with his voice.

But he didn’t touch the cursor. Some nights this computer was a godsend. Other nights it was a curse. This was one of those nights. Tonight he wouldn’t be lulled by the words, transported to conversations about how he had just ‘needed to get the thoughts down to keep them from rattling around in his head.’ Tonight that comfort seemed so very, very far away.

Instead by the blue light of the screen and the almost light of the window, he stared at the tiny vial pinched between his fingers. He shouldn’t have this. He should have destroyed it. It had been years. He rolled it back and forth, watching the white powder glow blue.

He remembered being angry, so incredibly angry, when he found out Ash had taken this, that he had kept it. Evidence, he had said. Proof. 

Then later, a logical argument, if a weak one. Others knew it existed. Too many had done analysis. Too many had seen experiments. People didn’t walk away from power. People didn’t let it go. Someone would try again.

There was massive amounts of research, of data hidden on this computer. It was written in a code created from another code, hidden behind walls of encryption he didn’t understand. He’d never gone looking, though he knew the password that would unlock at least part of it. A joke. Pumpkins. ‘The scariest thing I can think of,’ he’d said.

He shook the vial This was supposedly a more refined version. A breakthrough of a sort by the National Mental Health Institute. Certainly Dawson hadn’t howled in terrified agony. He could still hear Shorter beg, still hear him ask for death. Still hear Ash screaming. God he had thought nothing could hurt more than that moment.

He had been wrong.

He’d tried for a while. Tried to be normal. Tried to go home. But he couldn’t. No one at home could understand the quieter, sadder, angrier boy that had tried to pretend that anything mattered anymore. How do you move on when all you want is to go back?

So he came here. To this place, this house with its shadows and nightmares and computers that could sometimes, when he was very, very lucky, wrap his battered spirit in the words of the most amazing human being he had ever met. 

He clenched his fist, hiding the incriminating vial from view. His jaw clenched. He wished he could cry. Would it help? He didn’t know. He’d cried in the beginning, rivers of tears. It felt like he would drown in them. Like he’d dry up into a husk, all moisture spent. Now though, they wouldn’t come. Instead a chasm opened beneath him, dark and empty and eternal. 

He had wished to throw himself in more than once. 

But he couldn’t. Ash died to save him. An act of loving betrayal so vast it was impossible to breathe when he thought about it.

There was liquor in the cabinet downstairs. An oblivion of a different kind. But he’d tried that too. Bottles of rum mixed into coke, a deliberately self-flagellating combination tying memory to a desperate need to forget. It didn’t work. Not well enough. Not long enough.

He couldn’t do that to Sing. Not again.

The first rays of sunlight appeared over the horizon, turning the sky technicolor.

Dawn. 

His dream came back to him--images of sun on golden hair, mischief sparking in green eyes. Laughter. The gentle touch of a hand. The honor of trust, of friendship, of so, so much. 

Those were the hardest. Not the nightmares. To awake screaming, horror clinging to him was to feel relief at the safety of a clean room, a warm bed. No. The dreams of laughter and love and joy. The moments of potential, of two lives on the precipice of something incredible--those were the worst. Because when his eyes opened, he had to return to a world that had lost all color. 

The real world was a washed out grayscale version of what could have been. He hated it.

That was what had sent him here, to this room, this computer. A desperate need to feel him there, if only in the cold words on the screen. 

No one knew how many nights he spent here, listening, reading, telling himself that the words he wrapped himself in helped. Sometimes it did, he thought. Sometimes.

The best, and the worst, was a single audio file. Ash had recorded them both practicing Japanese. He’d said he could listen to it to analyze his mistakes, learn better inflection. He remembered making it. They were laughing as the recording started. And then,  _ then _ there was his voice. 

Hello, he said.

And Do you speak English?

And I’m home. 

This is delicious. 

Thank you for having me. 

The blossoms in the garden are lovely. 

Good-bye. 

Sayonara.

He tried to pause it before the end. He couldn’t bear to hear it.

He’d thought it would be better. After the show. After the photo. After Akira’s innocent questions. After the fight with Sing. He’d been so foolish. Better wasn’t a word he believed in any more.

What had possessed him to set foot in that library? He’d sat in his favorite spot, hands gripping the arm rest as he pictured long thin fingers tracing the words in his letter.

My soul will always be with you.

He opened his fist, looked at the innocuous glass vial in his hand. Such a small thing to have destroyed so many lives.

Brain damage. Loss of cognitive function with repeated dosing. He knew. He remembered Dawson’s docile form being led from place to place. Ash had told him of the curly haired man with the slow, monotone speech. They’d done away with Shorter’s screaming agony. What was left seemed to be an endless nothing.

He thought he knew what that might be like.

It struck him then. 

Forgetting would never work. 

He carefully set the tiny vial back into its hiding place. He called Buddy and set off to watch the sunrise. Was this what hope felt like? Or was it just a different flavor of despair?

Today he would take the ferry across the bay. He would see the city from the outside, get some perspective. Today he would go back to the library.

Today he would remember.

  
  
  
  


II

He didn’t understand most of what the scientific analysis really meant. But he grasped the basic gist. He had read and reread it so many times that he could practically recite it.

This was stupid. He knew it was stupid. Stupid and dangerous and probably selfish. But he was so far beyond desperate that stupid didn’t matter. 

He forced himself to watch the dawn.

He had put as much in order as he was able to. 

His photos were printed, numbered, matted. They were ready to display. A complete new show.  Ghosts he’d called it. He’d superimposed images of those he’d lost, Ash, Shorter, himself as ghostly images on normal life. He’d taken them to places they had never gotten to see thanks to the manipulation of film. He’d created images of them laughing with their guys, eating with family, visiting museums and gardens. The scenes were happy or wistful. This was the life they had all deserved. He wondered if he should ask Max about using the wedding photo.

There were no less than twenty images of Ash in Japan. A few were recognizable landmarks. But most were images from his hometown, the places he’d dreamed of showing him.

He made Ibe and Akira co-owners of all of his work.

He’d backed up every file on the computer twice before giving it to Sing. The thin, chrome laptop that sat in its place looked wrong, but it was newer, faster, had better screen resolution. He had used it’s top-of-the-line photo editing software for his latest collection. He had also used its audio editing feature. He didn’t mention it. Sing thought this meant he was finally moving on.

Sing was right.

He gave Buddy to Michael. A boy should have a dog. Michael was thrilled. Jessica was pleased that it would get him out of the house. Fresh air and exercise instead of endless hours with manga and video games. They had left on a walk almost immediately. It made him smile a little. Max gave him a funny look when he thanked him. 

He paid off his home. He made sure to call each family member back in Japan. He told them he loved them. He went to Sing’s graduation. 

He purchased an exact copy of Ash’s gun.

He printed photos, hunted down any scrap of recording of his voice. Read every essay and political analysis he had written. He pulled his clothes out of storage. He kept the room locked, the key on his person at all times. He knew what it looked like. He knew what they’d think. They were wrong. 

He hoped they were wrong.

Honestly, he didn’t really care.

But he didn’t want to hurt them. Sing, especially, deserved better.

He called Max, Ibe, Alex. He talked.

He made himself eat hot dogs and natto again.

He remembered. Every word. Every detail. He wrote out his dreams and his memories. 

It took months to be ready. Months where he thought he might just shake apart. Months to question his resolve, to question his sanity. Months of contemplating a tiny forbidden vial by the blue glow of a computer screen. 

At least once a week, he decided to throw it into the sea or light it on fire or pop open the lid and let the wind blow it away. At least once a week, he decided not to.

Choose a plan of action, and see it through. Everything had a cost. Ash taught him that.

He was close now. He was ready. He even found himself smiling sometimes. In the last few days, he hired a nurse just in case. It shouldn’t matter, shouldn’t be necessary, but you never knew. He wouldn’t saddle Sing or Ibe with that. He didn’t want them to hurt.

Eight years to the day since he met the love of his life, he sent three emails.

To Sing: I can’t live without him. I refuse to keep trying. Whether this works or not, please know that I valued your friendship, and I do not now, nor have I ever blamed you for anything.

To Ibe: The end of suffering is never sad. I don’t know for certain what lies ahead, but I have to believe that it is what is better than what lies behind. Thank you for everything.

To Yut Lung: You won. I don’t believe you were better for it, but whatever joy it may grant you I give willingly.

He hit send. Now or never. If he didn’t work quickly, they’d stop him. And he knew he’d never have the chance to try again.

He unlocked the room. It was covered floor to ceiling in photos of Ash in all of his moods. A speaker played the voice clips quietly. He slipped on his red jacket, held an old green flannel to his face, although the scent was long gone. He set the gun on the desk.

His fingers trembled.

He lifted the vial shaking the reconstituted drug. He drew it up slowly into the needle. Reaching behind him, he flipped on a recording of his own voice, speaking calmly and clearly. He didn’t know how long it would take, so the loop was nearly two hours long. He set it to repeat, just in case.

“You said I never asked anything in return. Well, I’m asking now. Come back to me, please. Don’t stay where my soul cannot follow,” he whispered and jabbed the needle into his arm.

It hurt. God it burned like fire though his body. But he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, breathed through it. His own voice spoke its suggestion deep into his opening mind.

_ Ash’s spirit is alive. His soul is here with you. You can see him. You can hear him. You can feel his touch. Ash is alive. His soul is always with you. You will feel his arms around you. You will hear his laughter. You will be able to talk to him, argue with him. Hold him. He is here and he loves you...Ash’s spirit is alive. His soul is here with you. You can see … _

Sing found him at dawn the next day. 

III

Sing had expected the worst. He knew that. He even regretted it. 

It couldn't have been easy to find his body, chilled and twitching. Still, he supposed, it could have been worse. Sing knew he’d vowed to live, to honor Ash’s stupid sacrifice. To give him his final wish as he could give him nothing else. He also knew what his actions, and his message had looked like. How do you say goodbye the right way? He still didn’t know.

  
  


It couldn’t be helped.

Sing had been furious when he learned what had actually happened. But by then it was too late. He guessed the others probably were too. He didn’t know. Couldn’t remember. The early days were still hazy. He remembered yelling.

It hadn’t been a complete dose. Closer to two thirds. Nothing left to give a second shot.

He didn’t know if he’d suffered “cognitive loss.” He could still hold a conversation, still manage gallery shows. He still called Ibe and talked about the cherry blossoms blooming. He forgot things more often, maybe. Perhaps understanding Ash’s essays was a little more difficult. But his mind was still mostly his. 

Did that mean the effects would wane? Sing had suggested that as a reassuring possibility. Maybe someday he’d get fully back to himself.

He hoped not.

“Hey, what’s that look for?” Slightly translucent fingers brushed his hair from his face. He felt them with absolute certainty. “Let the guilt go.You can’t change it, Eiji.”

It was a little odd the way Ash could sometimes read his mind now. But as those gentle hands dragged him up away from his computer and into the bedroom, he couldn’t regret anything. He settled into the warm embrace, allowing his eyes to flutter shut as lips grazed his forehead. “I missed you today, love.”

For months they had tried to convince him that he was hallucinating. Ash was dead, they said. He needed to accept reality, they said. And some part of his mind remembered that they were right. He knew that normal, living men could leave their home and walk the streets. He knew that normal living men couldn’t just appear in the library reading books. He knew that other people would be able to see what he saw if it was really, truly real.

But he also knew that Ash’s spirit awaited his return whenever he went out. He knew that Ash would laugh with him and talk with him and argue with him. It didn’t matter if his fingers shimmered nearly invisible in bright sunlight when he could feel them on his skin. It didn’t matter that Sing looked at him in awkward discomfort when he smiled at the snarky comments only he could hear or laughed happily at the shadows.

This was what mattered. The arms that wrapped around him as he cooked. The voice that mocked him when he still, even after eight years, forgot English terms when he was tired or angry. In his more lucid moments, he was grateful for the way his mind had recreated his memory nearly perfectly. He didn’t know what he’d do if his mind had created some perfect docile ideal. 

His Ash was still stubborn and prickly and difficult. He still teased and prodded. He was still hard to wake up in the morning and incredibly, delightfully easy to talk to. He was still brilliant and wonderful. His Ash still had nightmares and moments of doubt, and he still let him hold him and comfort him. His Ash let him love him wholly and completely. 

Most of the time, Ash just was. A presence in his life where for eight years there had been only absence.

And the cold knot that had lodged in the bows of his ribs finally eased. He ate better, smiled more. And if he lost in some ways, he gained in others. 

He wasn’t alone anymore. 

He was considered odd now. He knew that. He was viewed as eccentric among art circles. Evidently  Ghost had been a huge hit, and the story of the tortured artist driven mad by grief sold space in review columns. It raised the value of his work. Ash found it hilarious.

Alex said he’d lost his marbles. He’d punched him, right in the face in fury. He had thought Alex had moved on more than that. It seemed so. He regretted the loss of a man he’d come to think of as a friend. But some sacrifices were inevitable, Ash had told him.

Max would no longer visit him in his home. It made him sad, he’d said. He wondered if it was actually regret over his choice or jealousy because he had found what Max still mourned as lost. He was sure it was the latter when Ash would gently rest a hand on Max’s shoulder and he clearly couldn’t feel it. He had stopped pointing it out, but Max still didn’t come. They got coffee sometimes, out in the city where Ash couldn’t go. It was bittersweet.

Sing brought the computer back. He’d said this house was a good place for them both to talk to ghosts. He liked the idea of that, of ghosts. It was a term they could agree on. Sing told him that he liked it that his smile reached his eyes again. It seemed to ease something in Sing to see him happy.

He was finally able to forgive Lao.

Sometimes, in his dreams, he remembered that Ash was gone. He’d wake in a cold sweat, panicked screams echoing off the walls of his room. Pain would grip him for a moment. And then he was there, holding him. He would soothe his fears, whisper in his ear. Kiss and caress away the last lingering horror of loss. With his eyes closed there was nothing to remind him that all of this was in his mind.

He turned in Ash’s arms, pressing a kiss to his jaw. He watched as Ash swallowed, grinned as his brilliant green eyes looked down on him with such love that he felt it down to his very bones.

Even on the days he could remember that there may have been something to regret, he could find none in his heart. Every price he paid was worth it. It seemed only fair that after everything it had destroyed, Banana Fish should give something back.

His love. His light. His Ghost.

Eiji smiled. “I missed you too.”


End file.
